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Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
Greece and Turkey in Europe: Vol. XIX. 1876–79.

Turkey in Europe, and the Principalities: Montenegro

Montenegro

By Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–1892)

THEY rose to where their sovran eagle sails,

They kept their faith, their freedom, on the height,

Chaste, frugal, savage, armed by day and night

Against the Turk; whose inroad nowhere scales

Their headlong passes, but his footstep fails,

And red with blood the Crescent reels from fight

Before their dauntless hundreds, in prone flight

By thousands down the crags and through the vales.

O smallest among peoples! rough rock-throne

Of freedom! warriors beating back the swarm

Of Turkish Islam for five hundred years,

Great Tsernogora! never since thine own

Black ridges drew the cloud and brake the storm

Has breathed a race of mightier mountaineers.